Dark Purposes Part 2
by Arcole
Summary: True has been taken by the Terrians in hopes of curing her of the same mysterious illness Devon has; meanwhile, the captured ZED is coming apart mentally. My Season 2, Episode 7. I'd read in order if I were you.
1. Chapter 1

Dark Purposes Part 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own Earth 2. But if I did, it would have had a real second season and not just a virtual one. **

Chapter One

_Previously on Earth 2 . . . flashbacks of Bess and John Dreaming of the black rain with the warning that True is dying, the animal attack on Uly and True, True's collapse and her being carried beneath the earth by the Terrian. _

John Danziger watched in a mix of fear and grief as the Terrian took his daughter from his arms and sank into the earth of the uncovered floor of the med lab. It took everything he had to let her go. The second Terrian moved quickly into the open space in the flooring and sank as well.

Once the Terrian vanished into the ground, Danziger stepped forward, dropping to one knee and placing his hands onto the earth as if seeking to Dream with them. His head dropped and his eyes closed. After a moment, he felt a hand on his shoulder and he looked up to see Uly standing next to him, his head tilted in a characteristic Dreaming pose.

"They will bring her to the old meeting place in the square," he said distantly. "It will be a while, though. I'm not sure how long, but it won't be soon."

"Then we'll wait," Danziger answered in a rough voice, reaching up to pat Uly's hand gently.

Uly's eyes opened and he looked directly at the mechanic. "I don't know where the meeting place is," he said in confusion.

"I do," Danziger answered, rising to his feet. The two ignored the questioning looks of the others in the room to head outside, back to the clearing in the middle of town where Danziger had Dreamed of a black rain and dying children.

"This is it, Uly," he said, turning in a slow circle to take in the grassy area. "They'll bring True back here." He put all the confidence he could into his words, but in his heart he still heard Bess's words in his ears—True's dying.

Bess, Morgan, Alonzo, Julia, Yale, Baines, and Danner followed Danziger and Uly outside. Bess clung to Morgan's arm as she too remembered the Dreams they'd been given from the planet, warnings that they would all die, beginning with True, then Alonzo, unless Julia could find a way to stop the progress of the disease Franklin Bennett had unleashed on the original colonists in the form of a black rain of unknown particles.

Alonzo stood with Julia, Yale, and the others at the door of the settlement's main complex, looking to where Danziger and Uly stood in the middle of a grassy area between buildings. Alonzo also knew that place, as he had stood there with Danziger and Bess on the Dreamplane.

"What do you think, Julia?" Alonzo heard Yale asking. "Is there a chance this could work?"

Julia stood there for a moment in thought. "We saw what the Terrians did for Uly," she began. "But Uly wasn't nearly as acutely ill. If they'd been able to get to her sooner, I would feel better about it." She then looked up at Alonzo, questions of her own reflected in her eyes. "What do you get from the Terrians?" she asked.

He tried again to reach them. He'd been trying constantly to enter the Dreamplane with them ever since True had been taken. "Nothing," he said sadly. "I get the feeling that they are so intent on what they are doing they don't have time to talk."

"That's a good sign, then," Yale suggested from his spot next to them. "That means True is still alive."

**Roll opening credits.**

Bess looked at Yale with relief. "You're right, Yale," she said. "I think that's a very good sign."

"What do we do now?" Morgan asked. "We've left the ZED back inside in limbo. Shouldn't we let him up or something?"

"I don't know," Alonzo replied. "What do you get from him?"

"I get the feeling that he's not a threat to us anymore," Morgan replied with more confidence than he realized he felt. "We had a sort of meeting of the minds in there."

Baines scratched his head. "I hate to say it, but I agree with Morgan. I don't get the feeling that he's interested in hurting us. He seems a little confused, but peaceful," he added. "That whole Dreamplane thing is pretty incredible, guys. I had no idea." Danner nodded her agreement.

"So if nobody has any objections," Alonzo began, "Bess, Morgan, and Yale can lift the immobilization code on the ZED—but we still all keep a close eye on him. The first sign of trouble and either Bess or Morgan hits him with a dose of planetary shutdown or one of the rest of us hit him with a sedi-derm or a magpro, whichever is closer."

"Morgan and I could add a failsafe program as well," Yale suggested.

"Sounds good to me," Alonzo stated. Then he gave everyone a questioning look, and at the nods of agreement all around, Bess, Morgan, and Yale went back to the med lab. Danner and Baines followed them into the building, leaving Alonzo and Julia to watch after Danziger.

"This whole thing makes me nervous," Julia said quietly. Alonzo placed an arm around her shoulder, and she continued, "We have no idea what this ZED is capable of. We have no idea what is happening to True. I feel helpless, Alonzo." She looked up at him with vulnerability in her eyes. "I don't like feeling helpless. And I can't begin to imagine how John feels right now."

"I know what you mean," Alonzo said, glancing at at the silhouette of the tall mechanic gazing across the prairie into the distance. "Ever since the crash, he's coped with setbacks by either fixing something or going scouting. Right now, he can't do either. He's just got to wait. At least you can work on what you've learned from the ZED's biochip implant to add to what we know about stopping these crazy particles before they kill us all."

"Starting with True, then you," Julia replied thoughtfully. "How are you feeling?"

"I have to admit, ever since running back into camp, I haven't felt so hot," Alonzo sighed. "Nothing serious, just really wiped out."

"Let's get you to the med lab and let me check you out," Julia replied.

When he began to shrug off her concern, she reached out for his arm and looked at him intently. "If the particles are starting to get the upper hand, the earlier we treat the symptoms, the better our chances of slowing down the progress long enough to find a cure for it. Plus if I can track the progress from the start, I might learn something important about the mechanism of those things."

"So you do care, huh?" Alonzo teased, giving her a little chuck under the chin, hoping to bring a smile. She'd been under so much pressure over the past several weeks to cure them all before it was too late—to cure them of mysterious diseases with mysterious causes with nothing but a few hints to go on.

It seemed to him that Julia had been called upon to singlehandedly found a new branch of G889 medicine. She was certainly up the challenge in most respects, but he hated to see her so serious all the time.

To his surprise, Julia not only smiled at him, but pulled him into soft kiss. "Yes, Alonzo," she responded, "I do care."

In the med lab, Bess, Morgan, and Yale gathered again around the still form of the ZED, once known as Charlie—a young miner caught up in an uprising until station authorities had captured him and turned him into a ZED, a genetically and cybernetically altered, emotionless supersoldier. With the help of the planet, they'd unlocked his memories of his previous life and restored most of his autonomy.

He was no longer controlled by orders from Riley, the orbiting Council computer. But with his autonomy came many questions. What would he do? How would he cope with his past, both his recently uncovered memories of his home in the mines and the resurgence of emotional reactions to his actions on the planet? He'd committed many atrocities on the planet as a ZED. Could he reconcile those actions with the person he once was? Could he become someone new?

The three of them knew what he was up against, Yale best of all, having downloaded the files of the ZED's past into his own databanks. Yale did not look forward to the examination he would have to perform on them. He had seen enough in summary to convince him that the ZED program on this planet performed deeds nothing short of institutionalized evil.

This individual ZED had been a pawn in the game the Council was playing with the planet. Now he'd been set free. Perhaps being with the group could help him deal with it.

As they slipped onto the Dreamplane, the ZED looked up to them. "What is happening out there?" he asked with something very close to interest. Morgan and Bess exchanged a look of quiet satisfaction. Their ZED was making progress.

They quickly filled him in on the basics of the situation. "I am glad to know that your work with my implant helped the little girl," he replied. "However, I am unaware of any medical facilities possessed by the Terrian population."

"I don't think they practice medicine the way we know it," Morgan replied wryly. "Are you ready to rejoin the land of the moving?"

"Yes," the ZED responded.

"Now, Charlie," Yale continued more seriously, "We must warn you that before we deactivate your immobilization code sequence, we're going to institute a failsafe sequence. If you even begin to harm anyone in our group, you will go into automatic shutdown, understand?"

"Nothing personal," Morgan added, "it's just that you nearly killed two of us already and broke Bess's arm."

The ZED looked into himself for a second or two as if accessing memories, then turned to Bess. "I regret that my previous programming resulted in your injury, Bess. Please do add the failsafe sequence. I do not wish to injure anyone else, even accidentally," he said, a note of sad resignation in his voice. "And please, do not call me Charlie. I am not Charlie any more. It has been too long."

"What do you suggest then?" Yale asked gently. "I retained the name Yale when my mindwash was broken. Would you prefer 'ZED' or your designation code, perhaps?"

"A code?" Bess repeated in disbelief. "Yale, that's just gross." She turned to the ZED and looked up into his clear green eyes. "You need a name. Every person has a name, not a code."

"I do not know what I wish to be called at this time," the ZED answered in confusion.

"How about Zeke?" Morgan offered. "You know, zed, zee, zeke—it kind of works."

"Zeke?" Bess echoed.

"Zeke," the ZED answered. "I can adjust to that."

"Fine, then, Zeke," Morgan responded with a satisfied smile, "let's just get you de-immobilized."

Outside, Danziger and Uly stood alone in the open field. Alonzo and Julia had returned to the med lab. The others were keeping their distance—out of respect, fear, confusion—who knew.

For Danziger, the main thing was that Uly was there. He was a link to the Terrians and therefore back to True. He'd tried asking the planet what was going on, but only got vagues images of Terrian activity and a sense of comfort. He presumed that she meant it was a Terrian thing and he wouldn't understand.

After several long minutes of silence, curiosity and concern got the best of him and he dropped to one knee to be on Uly's eye level. "Uly," he began hesitantly, "when the Terrians took you when we first got to the planet, what did they do? How did it feel?"

Uly looked off in concentration. His first inclination was to spin a wild and wonderful yarn about the wonders of the Terrian world and the amazing things he'd seen. After all, he'd done that a number of times in his own mind, creating a whole fantasy about being a Terrian prince.

But another, more mature part of him knew that those imaginative days were rapidly drawing to a close and he would have to begin to see his interaction with the Terrians on a more realistic level—even if he wouldn't phrase it as such.

"I remember being really scared when I felt them pulling me into the ground," he began. "Then it was all dark and comfortable, and I knew I didn't need to be afraid. Part of the time it felt like I was flying," he said, his words drifting off into the memory.

"I don't really remember anything else happening until you were there picking me up." He looked up at Danziger with pity in his eyes. "I'm sorry I can't tell you what's happening to True. But I don't think she'd be hurt or afraid."

Danziger looked up and blinked his eyes a few times. Uly wondered if he were going to cry. He hoped not. That would be disturbing. To his relief, Danziger just smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder as he rose to stand next to him again.

Out on the prairie, the sun was beginning to set over the lush vista of green. Danziger stood there, looking out, trying not to think, but failing miserably.

Memories kept flooding back—almost as vividly as when he was sick with the virus Wentworth got from that behavior mod chip the Council inflicted on her. He thought about True, but he also found himself thinking of Ellie, his childhood in the Quadrant, his time in the military. It was as if the floodgates of his own being were opened and he was being asked to re-examine who he was and how he'd become that person.

He thought of how he'd worked his way from menial laborer to Chief of Ops on a variety of supply ships. He thought of the days he'd spent on the stations between contracts trying to find a way to keep True fed and clothed. There were so many things he'd wanted to give her that he couldn't. The burden of his debt, plus the cost of keeping Ellie in a decent care facility ate such a hole in his credit there were days he'd literally begged for work of any kind just to put food on the table.

The contract with Adair had seemed like such a godsend—enough to pay off everything, give them a fresh start, a new life—maybe even with Ellie at their side. All he had to do was give up 44 years of time stationside.

It wasn't that hard a choice. He'd never had much to hold him to the stations; True was indeed his entire life. And now she was God knows where beneath the earth in the hands of aliens, maybe scared, maybe hurt, maybe dying. All he knew was he couldn't help her. Every problem he'd ever faced could be solved by doing something—every problem but this. All he could do was wait.

The hours passed almost in slow motion. He stood with Uly until someone brought out a variety of storage boxes and stools. When Uly began to waver on his feet, Danziger finally took a seat on a long box, Uly next to him. It was only when Magus and Walman came out to build a fire off to the side that he realized that the air was getting cool. Bess brought out a jacket for him and a blanket for Uly and sat off to the side with Morgan.

Some time later, Cameron appeared with plates of food. Uly ate heartily, but Danziger just stared at his. Cameron stood over him until he took a couple of bites; then, satisfied that Danziger had at least tried his dinner, he went back into the compound. Once he was out of sight, Danziger set the plate aside. He didn't have much of an appetite.

Magus and Walman tended the fire for a while, then Baines and Mazatyl took over. When Uly leaned over against him asleep at last, Yale appeared to carry him to bed.

The night wore on—Bess and Morgan rising to leave at last. Bess gave him a long look, and to his surprise Morgan placed a hand on his shoulder, patting it once in sympathy. They were soon replaced by Yale, who had settled Uly into bed.

The stars were out overhead, clear and beautiful. The night was chilly, but not cold. Danner came out to relieve Mazatyl and tended the fire with Baines. Alonzo and Julia came out to sit next to him on a couple of stools. Yale finally went to check on Uly, and Baines and Danner went inside.

Ever so often Alonzo would stoke the fire with fresh wood, keeping the blaze high enough to create warmth and deter the strange animals they knew were prowling in the tall grass outside the perimeter.

Deep in the night, Magus and Walman were back, sending Alonzo and Julia in with a quiet word that Danziger couldn't hear well enough to understand. Yale too reappeared to sit next to him quietly.

No one spoke much. They all knew that there was no need for conversation. Their presence alone said what they meant in a way that Danziger understood.

In the darkest hours of the night, his memories turned to Devon. He remembered how when Uly was taken, she'd waited with Yale while he searched the tunnels. She'd taken a sedi-derm and made Dream promises to the Terrians to get her son back. Somehow, in a wait and see situation, Devon Adair had found a way to be proactive and do something.

But then he remembered when Gaal had taken the Terrians prisoner and Uly was sick again. The entire time they waited for the contact to come from the Terrian that had called them, she'd waited. She'd waited almost completely alone for hours and hours with only Julia and Yale to check in on Uly.

He wished that he'd gone to sit with her then. He of all people in this group knew what it was like to have a child, to have that child in trouble. But they were butting heads so badly during that time—it was a constant contest of wills between them.

His leadership style versus hers. His ideas versus hers. His pragmatism versus her idealism. They'd managed to work out so much between them over the following months, enough that they functioned as a leadership team, each one bringing something to the mix that the other lacked.

Right that minute he missed her. He wished devoutly that Devon Adair was there at his side, to give him what he lacked--to bring her optimism and confidence to bear, her trust that this new world was the best place for all of them, her faith that all would be well.

He wished she was there to offer the understanding that another parent would have—another parent who'd seen her child suffering and knew the high price of the treatment. There was a hole in his life where Devon Adair used to be and it was only at this moment that he realized just how big that hole really was.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Everyone, Danziger included, believed that when dawn broke, the Terrians would be back up through the earth, True in hand. However, that did not occur.

Briefly, just after dawn, Alonzo had a short contact with the Terrians, who told him that the change was underway but that it was difficult and time-consuming. She was very sick and they would make no promises. They then cut off the contact as if they'd taken enough time away from their work.

He went out to tell Danziger what he'd heard from them.

"Thanks, Lonz," he'd replied simply. Alonzo looked at his friend and could see the strain of the past night—no the past several weeks--lining his face. He looked exhausted.

"Go inside and lie down for a bit," Alonzo suggested. "We know it will be a while yet. I'll stay here and keep watch."

"No, I'm all right," Danziger replied. Alonzo was not surprised. He knew that until True came back to him, nothing would drag her father off that spot.

They sat in silence for a bit, then Danziger turned to him. "When the Terrians took Uly," he began, "Devon made a promise to get him back. We made good on that promise when we rescued the tribe from Gaal. What are we promising now, Lonz? What deal are we making for True?"

Alonzo thought for a moment, then carefully responded, "I think the Terrians are the ones making good on a promise this time. I think they regretted what happened to the colonists' children very much. They felt responsible. I get the feeling from them that they are looking to repay that debt by helping True."

Danziger nodded. After another long silence, he spoke again. "What's she going to be like when she comes back?"

"Like Uly maybe, like me," Alonzo answered. "I don't think you'll see much obvious change in her. It'll be interesting to see how Uly reacts to having another part-Terrian in the group."

At the word part-Terrian, Alonzo could see Danziger stiffen a little. "Don't get bent out of shape, Danz. After all, aren't you part flower now?" he teased, hoping to break down the mood a little.

Danziger smiled weakly, then responded, "I guess so." Then he stood up and looked out over the dewy grass ahead of them. He walked over to the fire, which had nearly died down completely. "I just want her back, Lonz," he said softly. "She's my life."

In the main dining hall of the complex, Cameron busily set out trays of food for breakfast. Each day in the complex gave him back just a little more of his self-confidence. No one in the group could run a kitchen the way he could; no one in the group could feed them so well. At last, he'd become valuable. He relished every minute of it and dreaded the day that they would leave all this behind and he would go back to being just another hand.

He heard a noise and looked up to see the ZED enter the room. Cameron was at first nervous, then calmed down a bit when he realized that Morgan and Bess were with him. They didn't seem afraid of him, so perhaps it was safe after all.

"Zeke," Morgan was saying, "how long has it been since you've had a real breakfast?" The ZED—Zeke, Cameron noted with interest—just looked mystified.

"Can I interest you in some multi-grain pancakes with berry syrup?" Cameron offered, completely in his element. Zeke just looked at him blankly, so Cameron took the initiative to place a short stack on a plate and top it with his freshly made syrup—a mix of earth and G889 berries and very delicious if he did say so himself.

Morgan and Bess followed suit and dug in merrily, watching the ZED out of the corner of their eyes. Clearly the poor thing had been eating spirulina and concentrated nutritional bars for too long, Bess thought to herself as she watched Zeke struggle with his fork.

At last he awkwardly managed to get a bite to his mouth, syrup dripping everywhere. If the constant praise Cameron had been getting from the rest of the group had been gratifying, the look of uninhibited delight on Zeke's face eclipsed them all. Cameron felt as though he'd been instrumental in creating a spiritual breakthrough.

"I'd forgotten about food," Zeke managed to say. "I'd forgotten what food is like. How could I forget this?"

"I'll be glad to help you remember all kinds of things about food," Cameron said proudly. "Just let me know if you have any requests."

Zeke nodded and proceeded to enjoy his pancakes, the rest of Bess's pancakes (Morgan had eaten quickly when he saw where things were headed), and several more plates of the wide variety of dishes Cameron had concocted for the morning.

As the other members of the group came in to eat, they all enjoyed the spectacle of the huge, frightening ZED gleefully sampling everything on the board. Finally, Bess and Morgan had to practically drag him away from the table physically for fear he would hurt himself.

"What else is there to do?" Zeke asked as they sat in the central lounge area with Walman, Magus, and Mazatyl. "What else have I missed?"

Magus looked at the layer of road dust that covered him and remembered their discovery of the complex with a sigh. "When was the last time you had a real, hot water shower?" she asked.

Walman took a good look at all the cybernetic equipment that burdened Zeke's body. "I don't know if he ought to get wet. He looks like he might short out," he suggested doubtfully. When Magus hit him on the arm in reprimand, Walman replied defensively, "I wasn't trying to be mean—I was trying to be helpful."

"No offense taken. I am fully waterproof," Zeke replied evenly, then he looked at Walman intently as if trying to place him in his memory. When the memory clicked into place, a look of remorse fell over his face. "I injured you, didn't I? I hope you have recovered fully. I am very sorry that I caused you pain."

"Don't remind me," Walman answered grimly, shuddering at the recall. "Apology accepted if you won't mention it again." The ZED just looked at him sadly. "I mean it, I'm fine," Walman reiterated. "Go take a shower."

Zeke stood up, then paused as if unsure which direction to go. "You can use ours," Bess offered. "Morgan, go show him where to find everything."

Morgan gave Bess a long, strange look, then turned to Zeke, "Sure, no problem. Follow me, Zeke." After they left the room, everyone unexplainably burst into hysterical laughter. For some reason, the whole idea of Morgan Martin showing a ZED where to find the shampoo was unaccountably hilarious.

Outside, Cameron and Uly brought Danziger some breakfast. He looked up at them and rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"Here's some of what's left after Zeke finished demolishing the breakfast buffet," Cameron stated with a smile.

"Zeke?" Danziger asked, taking the plate politely.

"The ZED," Uly responded. "We're calling him Zeke."

"When did the ZED get reactivated?" Danziger asked sharply. Cameron and Uly looked at each other guiltily, as if they'd told some kind of secret.

"Uly, why don't we go find Alonzo or Yale or somebody," Cameron offered brightly as the two of them backed away.

Danziger eyed his breakfast plate suspiciously, then put it aside. What on earth was going on around here?

Within a few moments, Alonzo and Yale approached, Bess close behind. "You wanted to speak with us?" Alonzo asked as Danziger rose from his seat on the storage box.

"Who reactivated that ZED?" Danziger asked hotly. "What kind of safeguards do you have on him?

"Morgan, Yale, and I reactivated him after the group decided it was okay," Bess answered in a soothing voice. "We've got a failsafe program downloaded into him. The minute he even seems like he might hurt somebody, he'll shut down automatically. Plus, Mom can shut him down through you, me, or Morgan."

"Everyone involved felt like Zeke was no longer a threat to us," Yale added calmly. "He seems to be doing very well at reintegrating into society."

"No offense, Yale," Danziger butted in, pacing back and forth in his consternation, "but this is not a long lost lamb. It's a ZED. I had a nice, long conversation with a ZED a few months ago. He also seemed like a nice enough guy in between shooting people and torturing them." He stopped then and looked down at them piercingly. "And why are you calling him Zeke?"

"Long story," Alonzo answered smoothly. "So far, it seems to be going well." He pulled up a seat to watch Danziger pace, then added reassuringly, "Don't worry. We're watching him closely."

"Who's watching him now?" Danziger asked shortly.

"Morgan," Bess responded. "Zeke went to take a shower." Danziger just looked at her in disbelief. She reached out to pat him on the arm then continued, "Let me bring Zeke out here and you can spend a few minutes getting to know him."

"You people have gone completely nuts," Danziger concluded. "I do not want to meet the ZED. But I do want to talk to Baines and Walman about the dunerail though. I think I've got an idea for a way to straighten the frame."

Yale shrugged and put his arm around Bess's shoulders. "Let's go find Baines and Walman," he said. "I don't think John is in the mood for Zeke at the moment."

Alonzo sat quietly and watched Danziger pace a few moments longer. Then Danziger stopped and stretched his shoulders wearily before taking a seat again.

"How are you making it?" Alonzo asked.

"I really thought she'd be back by now," Danziger answered grimly. "What do you get?"

Alonzo tried yet again, but no luck. The Terrians weren't talking. "Nothing more," he sighed. "I wish I could just jump in there and give you an update, but I can't."

"It's hard, Lonz," Danziger said softly. "On the stations True never got sick. She broke her arm once climbing down off a cargo pod we were loading, but didn't even cry. She's such a trooper, moving from unit to unit and job to job without complaining. The only demand she ever made was for a cat." He laughed a little at that.

"She was just as much a mechanic as I was—heck, if she was here right now, I'd put her to work on the dunerail with the rest of them," he commented, rubbing at a kink in his neck. "And she'd do a better job than Baines—guaranteed."

"She'll be back here before you know it, John," Alonzo responded. "The Terrians will bring her back, smiling and running around just like Uly. And she'll be mad if there's nothing left for her to do on the rail."

"That's not what I wanted for her, you know," Danziger stated sadly. "I've worked all her life so she could be more than this. I've made her into the very thing I didn't want her to be."

"What do you mean?" Alonzo asked, shifting to a slightly more comfortable spot on the stool. His joints were beginning to ache a little from the long night of waiting with Danziger.

"I've dragged her from job to job, working as my little assistant from the time she could walk," Danziger explained. "No time or money for anything but the most basic on the job schooling. I taught her how to read myself from manuals and storage containers. She learned to add by counting bolts and cargo pods. I've been trying so hard to earn her way free that I've made her into a drone in the process. All she knows is work."

Danziger looked grim, and Alonzo realized his friend had spent entirely too much time in his own head over the last several hours. He could only hope the Terrians would bring True back before much longer. Bring her back safe and sound—the alternative was unthinkable.

Just then Julia walked up, diaglove at the ready. Alonzo expected her to run a quick check on Danziger, but to his surprise, she approached him first. "How are you feeling?" she asked him.

"Fine, I guess," Alonzo answered in confusion. "What are you checking me for?"

"I've been running more tests on your blood samples," she said as she busily adjusted the glove, checking her results. "I've come up with a couple of treatment options that I want to try."

"Julia, what's up with Alonzo?" Danziger asked in concern.

"I'm not going to pull any punches with either of you," she replied. "Alonzo is showing signs that the particles are beginning to overwhelm his biochip implant's ability to handle. I think for him it was the rush of adrenaline from the scare with True yesterday."

She pressed an injection against his neck. "This might make you a little sleepy," she stated. "The particles seem to respond to increases in cellular energy, so I'm trying to slow you down a little."

She passed Danziger some gear. "If he starts to go to sleep, call me," she requested. "I'll be in the med lab working through some more data."

Then she passed her diaglove over Danziger's head and chest. "You know that you're working under a serious sleep deficit," she stated in concern. "Plus, you haven't eaten more than a couple of mouthfuls in over a day now."

"I'm fine, doc," Danziger protested as Julia brought out an injection. "I'll eat and sleep when this is all over."

"Of course you will," she answered. "That's why I'm giving you a stimulant and energy boost for now." She pressed the injection into his neck and Alonzo could see Danziger visibly perk up.

"What's in that thing?" he asked in amazement. He sat up and took a deep breath. "I feel great."

"It's only temporary and no replacement for real food and rest," she warned. "And don't ask for another one, you won't get it. This is just to get you through today. If they haven't brought True back by nightfall, you'll just have to bring out a cot and sleep here." Julia gave Danziger a very stern look.

"Meanwhile, I'm sure you can get one of the guys to bring you something to do," she continued.

As if on cue Baines and Walman approached the trio, carrying the rail's busted solar conversion panel between them. Following them to Danziger's dismay, were Morgan Martin and a tall red haired man wearing clean clothing and a bemused expression.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

"What the hell is this?" Danziger asked gruffly as the two men approached with the solar conversion panel between them.

Baines and Walman placed the bulky panel on the ground in front of Danziger, then began to point out all the areas of damage. "Okay, I get it, the panel's got problems," Danziger sighed. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Word on the street is that you've got a plan to straighten the frame," Walman began. "We just want you to be aware that even with a straightened frame, this panel is past fixing. The rail is not going anywhere."

"What do you mean, 'past fixing'?" Danziger practically roared. "Every single component you pointed out has at least three alternate replacements. Hell, I can take the panel assembly off the main dish secondary solar array and fix three-quarters of this without even having to adjust the charge modulation frequency."

"In that case," Baines replied in frustration, "how about I climb up on the roof and bring you the secondary solar array from the main dish and a large assortment of tools and let you get to work, Danziger?"

"You do that, Baines," Danziger responded hotly. "Walman, you get out to the main shop building and find some heavy duty structure bar. We're going to build a jig and man-handle that frame back into shape. Mazatyl ought to be of help too—he's had some experience with high strength building materials."

"What are you trying to fix?" Zeke asked from the side.

Morgan pointed across the compound at the crumpled form of the dunerail. "That," he stated flatly. "It got blown around in that storm that came through here a few days ago." To Morgan's surprise, the ZED walked over to the rail and ran his hands across the frame with practiced ease.

"They are correct about the conversion panel," Zeke began. "I do not believe it can be repaired by the means Mr. Danziger is suggesting. However, I believe we can straighten the frame." He looked up at Morgan, his eyes hopeful. "I have done similar work on mining vehicles. With a sufficiently robust jig frame to push against, we might be able to do it."

Morgan followed Zeke back over to the clearing where Danziger was doing inventory of the range of tools Baines had already provided him for work on the conversion panel. "Mr. Danziger, I believe I can be of help with the frame of the four-seater," he began. Danziger looked at him in quiet expectation, so he continued. "I've done work on mining vehicles before," he added. "The framing looks quite similar to some of the smaller recon vehicles we used."

"Mining vehicles, huh? You ever work on a rover?" Danziger asked expectantly.

"You have a Hummer Transrover?" Zeke asked in disbelief. At Danziger's nod, Zeke continued, "They're solid. I'll give them that. But the gearbox is a complete piece of--" Zeke broke off as he saw Uly approaching the group.

"I agree with you completely, Zeke," Danziger said with a smile. "I wouldn't give you two credits for every transrover gearbox on this planet. And to the best of my knowledge, there's only one, and it has made my life hell for months now."

"You know that it is possible to regear those things for high speed running," Zeke began in a conspiratorial tone. "We used to race them on Callisto."

To Morgan, Danziger looked for all the world as if he'd won the trans-station lottery. He and Zeke launched into a deep discussion of all things transmission oriented, a discussion which went over his head within the first two sentences. He also noticed that Zeke looked more relaxed, more human, than he had yet.

On the other hand, Alonzo looked completely bored. In fact his eyes were beginning to drift shut. Heck, after the night they'd all had, Morgan thought, he deserved a little sleep. Leaving the ZED in Danziger's care, he went back to the complex in search of conversation that didn't revolve around machinery.

Uly, meanwhile, took a seat next to the pilot, prodding him in the arm. "What are they talking about, Alonzo?" he asked curiously. He got no answer from the sleeping pilot and turned to Danziger.

"Mr. Danziger?" he called. Danziger had told Uly to call him by his first name, but to the boy it still felt funny to call him John.

Danziger immediately turned to Uly. "What's up? Have you heard from the Terrians?" he asked.

"No, sir," Uly replied sadly. "I'm sorry. I've just come to keep you company. I asked Alonzo what you guys are doing, but he didn't answer me."

Danziger looked over at Alonzo, who leaned back against against a storage container, eyes closed. "Hey, Lonz, you all right?" he asked. When he got no answer, he walked over to shake him. Alonzo didn't respond and panic began to descend on Danziger.

How long had he been out? Damn it, he should have kept a closer eye on him. Julia was going to be furious. He pulled up his gear to call her, simultaneously checking to be sure Alonzo was still breathing. Fortunately, he was.

"Julia, Alonzo's out cold," he stated.

"I'm on my way," she replied.

"Did anybody notice when Lonz drifted off on us?" Danziger asked the group gathered around. Walman shrugged along with Uly, Baines was just coming up with his arm full of rectangular solar array, and Morgan had disappeared.

Zeke, however, half closed his eyes and accessed his visual recordings. "Alonzo was awake two minutes and 35 seconds ago," he stated evenly, then added, "approximately."

Julia strode quickly up to the group, diaglove ready. "When did he go under?" she asked.

"About two minutes ago, according to Zeke," Danziger replied.

"Why didn't you call me then?" she asked, running her glove over the unconscious pilot.

"We just noticed," Danziger answered sheepishly. "I should have kept a closer eye on him."

"He's all right," Julia sighed, "just deeply asleep. I need to get him to the med lab so I can keep a check on him. Fortunately, slowing him down does seem to have slowed down the particle activity as well. It's buying us a little more time."

"Walman, Baines, you guys go get a stretcher and let's get Alonzo back inside, okay?" Danziger asked.

The two headed out immediately, leaving Danziger with Julia and Zeke. "They brought me things to do," Danziger said dryly. "That your idea?"

"I might have dropped a hint on my way out here earlier," she answered. "You needed something to work on."

"Thanks," Danziger replied. "I didn't think it was that obvious."

"You're too much like Devon," Julia responded with a little grin, looking over to where Uly had wandered off to check out the dunerail's remains. "Any time he was sick, I practically had to sedate her as well. She just never could manage much patience. Dr. Vasquez warned me, but I didn't believe half of what he told me until I saw first hand."

Danziger looked out over the planet's vista. "No, she tends to take action, patience be damned," he sighed. Julia wondered at the hard tone of his voice.

"Don't forget, John," she added. "Devon was also doing this for the 248 kids headed this way. She hoped that there would be a chance here for all of them."

"Yeah," he agreed, "but she'd have done the exact same thing if it had only been Uly. She'd have gone just as far and risked just as much if he'd been the only Syndrome kid ever born."

Julia thought for a moment. She had to agree with him. About that time Baines and Walman returned with the stretcher, and Danziger and Zeke between them easily loaded Alonzo's sleeping form onto it. Then Baines and Walman carried him on to the med lab.

"Keep me informed as to how he's doing," Danziger requested quietly as Julia rose to follow them. "Maybe you can learn something from True when she comes back. There might be something new or different about her that will help."

Julia nodded her agreement and turned to walk away, then she stopped and turned back to him. "Thank you, John," she said.

"For what?" he asked, mystified.

"For being willing—and patient," she answered with a smile. "Not to mention optimistic. I have trouble keeping hope alive by myself. Thank you for believing in me."

Danziger looked down at the doctor. She was tired, tired and frustrated. He placed his hands on her shoulders. "I do believe in you, Julia. Alonzo believes in you. Devon believes in you. We all do. You will figure this thing out," he offered. "Let me know what I can do to help."

Julia nodded, then turned to walk toward the complex. She knew that at least part of his good attitude lay in the mood enhancer she'd added to the stimulant she'd given him to help him cope. Maybe she shouldn't have played God in that sense. Maybe she was being selfish.

But she just couldn't watch John slip off into despondency—he was the glue that held them together. He didn't realize it, maybe nobody realized it, but without Devon, everyone looked to John to guide them, to let them know everything was under control. As long as he was confident in their course of action, everyone else was confident as well.

She couldn't let that confidence waver, not now. She was the only one who understood just how close to the edge Alonzo was, how much closer they all were. She needed John's confidence too, more than anybody.

Back in the med lab, she took a deep breath and ran her diaglove over Alonzo's sleeping form once again to reassure herself that he was really okay. Baines and Walman stood there expectantly. She asked Walman to go help Danziger, but asked Baines to hang around long enough to help her start another round of tests on yet another potential theory.

"How are things with the ZED?" she asked as they began to assemble the samples.

"Zeke?" Baines asked. "He seems to be doing fine. I can't believe he's such a nice guy."

Julia nodded, but deep inside, was very concerned by this attitude. Failsafe or no, 'Zeke' was an unknown quantity and a potential danger to them all. Mindwash failure was not something a person recovered from quickly.

Her experience with them was purely from an educational perspective, rather than personal, but historically speaking, a mindwashed individual was most likely to commit suicide as the result of recovery than anything else. Few became violent with others as a result, but that also could not be ruled out. If this ZED managed to reintegrate his personality over the next few weeks, he'd be the rare exception rather than the rule.

In all likelihood, she believed, he'd begin to suffer flashbacks of increasing intensity as the memories of his pre-wash past integrated with his post-wash actions. If he could not reconcile the differences, he would undergo complete personality disintegration. Maybe the contact he'd received with the planet would help him; certainly Yale had handled reintegration well.

Then again, Yale's post-wash actions were in no conflict at all with his pre-wash personality. Zeke, on the other hand, had not been a criminal in the past, but had performed monstrous actions post-wash. Julia truly believed he would not survive the integration process intact. She could only hope that his failsafe program would keep him from hurting anyone else in the process.

Outside, Zeke and Danziger debated the potential regearing of the slow transrover as Danziger worked on retrofitting parts from the dish solar array into the damaged dunerail converter. Uly watched in fascination as the rail's converter came apart into literally hundreds of pieces spread out over a large tarp under Danziger's careful disassembly. Walman spread a second tarp to hold the pieces of the dish's secondary array and began his own deconstruction job.

Just as the process was beginning to get really boring to the antsy young man, he felt a call on the edge of his consciousness. The Terrians were speaking to him again. He dropped on the Dreamplane to listen and was immediately disturbed by the tenor of their communications.

"Mr. Danziger," he called worriedly, "they're bringing True back, but not here—they're going directly into the med lab they say. They've done all they can, but they still can't fix her."

Without a word, Danziger lifted Uly into his arms and headed for the med lab in a dead run. They burst through the door, Danziger instructing Uly to tell Julia all he knew as he grabbed Baines by the arm and dragged him to the floor panel. The two men hauled it out of the way just as a Terrian head broke the surface, True in his arms.

When Danziger moved to take her, the Terrian trilled a warning. "No, Mr. Danziger," Uly called out. "He has to stay in contact with her, to keep the Mother close until Julia can help her."

If the planet needed to stay in contact, Danziger knew exactly how to accomplish that. He threw himself into the Dreamplane recklessly, calling to her, "Mom! Tell me what to do to help True!" He saw his path before him, but knew he'd need Bess to keep him from going too far. So he called her.

She was in the kitchen helping Cameron cut up fruit for lunch when she suddenly felt John's presence with her on the Dreamplane so vividly that she jumped in surprise, cutting her thumb deeply. Without a word, she tossed down the knife and fruit and ran.

In the med lab, Julia faced a quiet Terrian who stood there with True in his arms. Danziger stood next to him, eyes closed, as Bess entered the room.

"What's going on, John?" she asked fearfully.

"Mom needs us to help True," John explained. "Come in with me and help me."

He held out his hand to her and she took it. Julia noticed that blood was dripping from the fingertips of her other hand and onto the floor, but Bess didn't even seem to realize that she was injured. No one was speaking, not even Uly. They just stood there, communing with one another somehow.

At a loss, Julia reached out to seal the deep cut on Bess's hand, but the second she made contact, she found herself pulled into their link.

"Julia," Danziger greeted her. "Good, this is faster. Mom says she needs to pull our strength in for True. The Terrians have done all they can, but there's still something wrong with her they can't understand and can't fix. You have to do it, Julia. You have to find out what's wrong."

Just as suddenly as she was pulled in, she was shoved out again. She noticed that the wound sealer was still completing the seal on Bess's thumb—that meant the entire interchange had taken less than a second. Shaking herself into action, she grabbed her diaglove from the counter next to the shocked Baines and ran a first scan over True's motionless form.

Within seconds she could see the problem. True's system was overrun with toxins—trace metals, odd chemicals, both organic and inorganic. The odd particles she'd been researching had been broken down into a variety of substances—some of which were very nasty indeed.

"Baines, we have got to begin filtering these toxins out of her body. Her system can't handle the load," Julia declared urgently. It was serious, very serious, but a part of her was relieved. This she understood. This she could deal with—provided she could work quickly.

On the Dreamplane, John and Bess stood in the open field—the meeting place. Terrians surrounded them. True lay on the ground, half submerged in the loose earth.

Uly and Alonzo stood in the circle with the Terrians. Strange cries echoed in the air, haunting calls from the Terrians. They slowly began to circle True's still form. John and Bess knelt beside her.

"What do we do?" Bess asked quietly.

"I think I know," John replied. "I need you to keep an eye on me to be sure I don't go too far."

"What are you talking about?" she answered.

"This," he said holding out the sunstone before him with one hand and placing the other on True's chest. The stone began to glow with a brightness they'd never seen before as John poured his own energy into the link between the planet and his child.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Walman looked out over the pile of parts he and Danziger had created. Now Danziger had left without a word, leaving him completely at a loss as to what to do next.

"Well, Zeke?" he asked. "What do you suggest?"

"If Mr. Danziger can actually make this repair, I believe we should leave it him. I suggest we proceed with straightening that frame," Zeke replied. "We will need some assistance."

Walman pulled up his gear and called for Mazatyl. "Danz said you have experience with high strength construction materials," he began. "Why don't you come demonstrate what you know?"

Shortly thereafter, the three men, joined by Magus and Cameron, began constructing a simple, but strong frame jig. "Are you sure about this, Zeke?" Walman asked doubtfully.

"Trust me, I've done this at least a dozen times," Zeke responded naturally, his words flowing out of the part of him long suppressed.

With the words came memory—he stood with his father next to a partially crushed ore cart. "Charlie," his dad was saying, "that's the damage a cave-in can do, boy. If you hear the siren, get out of there, hear?"

Zeke shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind. He didn't want to remember his father. Or the mines.

They worked a while longer on the jig before Zeke felt confident that they'd created enough structure points to push against. Then they turned their attention to the rail itself. With the bent frame, it wouldn't roll easily. They'd have to half carry it.

Between them, the men managed to push/carry it across the compound into the shop area. The physical exertion felt good to Zeke and he found himself carrying far more than his share of the weight—largely because he could.

The last time he'd had such a workout was—he found himself dragged once again into a memory—this time of his ZED past. He'd been targeting a group of penal colonists. Somehow the few remaining survivors of his interrogations had barricaded themselves into a small abandoned air to ground transport shuttle.

They'd sealed the door against him, but his orders had been to interrogate and eliminate—he could not disobey. He'd shoved against the shuttle, but instead of budging the sealed door, he found the shuttle itself sliding across the ground. So, he'd put his back into it and pushed the shuttle against a large rock outcropping for stability.

He nearly dropped his handhold on the dunerail as he attempted to jerk his mind back from the memories. That was not him. Had never been him, he told himself.

"You okay, Zeke?" Walman asked in concern.

"It got heavy all of a sudden," Zeke managed to explain. The others laughed. It felt good to be part of a group again. He found himself back in the taverns of the mines after last shift. Everyone was laughing and drinking. His dad clapped him on the shoulder with a big smile.

Forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand, he helped the others lift the rail into place over the jig, which they'd fixed to the thick plascrete floor of the shop. Using a high strength rod as a lever, Zeke pulled against the bent frame, the end of the lever anchored firmly in the jig.

He was using a similar bar to pry open the door of the transport. He could hear the terrified voices of women and children crying inside as the seal began to fail. Only a little further.

"Only a little further," Cameron was saying. "Man, he's strong."

"You will be strong, stronger than you can imagine," a voice was saying to him as he lay on a table in a gray room with a white light over his head. "You will be an indestructible force. A ZED."

Each point of the frame began to come back into place as Zeke pulled and pushed against it. The others tried to help, but quickly realized none of them had the physical ability to manage a third of what he was doing on his own.

The door of the transport had finally failed utterly and the ZED entered to find the colonists dead by their own hands. "Colonists chose suicide over interrogation," he recorded into his data banks. "Four women, three children, two infants, one man," he dutifully recorded for Riley. He examined the bodies for surveillance tags, noting identities. The children he just moved to one side out of the way—they had no tags. He picked up the limp body of a baby. She had red hair, he noticed.

He was a little boy, then, holding his sister in his arms. She was only seven months old and already had a thick thatch of red hair, just like his, just like mama's. She smiled at him.

Then it was no longer his sister he held but the nameless little convict baby. Blood oozed out of a wound in the back of her head and onto his hands.

By now he had completely reshaped the dunerail frame. He looked down to see that he'd pulled so hard against the structure bar that his incredibly tough skin had begun to abrade. He was bleeding from the blisters he'd managed to raise. There was blood on his hands. He began to shake. He began to cry.

Meanwhile, John wandered the deeper levels of the Dreamplane calling for True. He moved through the grass that grew around him, but it shone with a blinding brightness and moved of its own accord as if alive.

When he had been there before, he'd been so sick and injured from the poison gas in the storm cloud that he was barely conscious even on the Dreamplane. If Bess hadn't come to get him, he didn't know if he'd have been able to find his way out on his own. He hoped he would be able to do the same for True.

He called to her again, and his voice fell flat, as if there was no air to carry it. "True!" he called. "Where are you?" He was beginning to get desperate. "True! Answer me!"

He looked out across the grass, hoping to see a spot that appeared to be parted, perhaps by the small form of a little girl. Maybe, he thought, looking ahead. Still calling, he pushed aside the waist high blades of grass as they swirled around him. With a surge of relief so profound he felt his heart skip, he saw her.

She lay curled up on her side, her face resting on her hands. "Truegirl," he called softly to her as he touched her shoulder. "Hey, sport, wake up. It's Dad."

"Daddy," came the soft whisper, her lips barely moving.

"Yeah, it's me, sweetheart," he replied, his voice choking up on him. "I've come to check on you."

"Have you come to put me to bed?" John could barely make out the words.

"Yeah, Truegirl," he answered gently. "Like when you were little. You just rest for now. I'll watch over you."

True's eyes flickered half open, and she tried to reach for him. "Don't leave, Daddy," she murmured.

Without a word, he gathered her into his arms, cradling her in his lap like she was a toddler again. She settled against him comfortably and gave a deep sigh. Then her eyes closed and she slept. "I'm not going anywhere, Truegirl," he promised, stroking her long hair away from her face. "Not ever."

The door of the med lab opened and Cameron entered quietly, his eyes growing large at the sight before him. A tall Terrian stood in the center of the lab with True in his arms. Beside him Danziger and Bess held hands, each with their free hand on True. Baines and Julia worked at the lab bench, Uly standing quietly next to them.

When Cameron entered, Baines intercepted him at the door. "What's wrong?" Baines asked quietly.

"There's something wrong with Zeke," Cameron replied.

"Physically?" Baines asked.

"Not really," Cameron answered, unsure of how to describe the sight of a giant, unstoppable soldier crying.

"Then go find Morgan or Yale," Baines suggested. "They'll be of more help than we will."

Cameron nodded and went searching. Yale was cybernetic eyeball deep in examination of everything they'd discovered so far about the particle, going back over the colony doctor's records once again for anything that could be of assistance to them. He distractedly suggested that Cameron find Morgan.

Sure enough, Morgan was in the vid room, oblivious to the drama unfolding around him. Cameron threw the door open on the Fall of Rome, dragging Emperor Morganus out by the toga. "The complex could be burning to the ground and you'd never know, would you?" he asked acidly.

"Hey, Cameron, get off my back." Morgan shook himself free of the caterer's grip. "The last I heard everything was fine. What's going on?"

Cameron quickly filled him in on Danziger's rush to the med lab for True's uncertain return. When Morgan tried to follow Bess to his aid, Cameron pulled him in the other direction. "I think Zeke needs you more right now," he suggested.

Morgan followed Cameron to the shop area where a small group had gathered around the now straightened dunerail. They stood and crouched at a distance from Zeke, who sat in the floor, tears pouring quietly down his face.

Suddenly, something flashed across his face—an emotion, a memory—Morgan couldn't tell what exactly, and Zeke jerked as if slapped.

She'd slapped him. His own mother had slapped him. "Why did you leave him, Charlie?" she'd cried angrily. The caves were dark and noisy, warning lights flashing yellow all around them, rescue crews pushing past.

"I'm sorry, Mom. I thought Dad was right behind me. I heard the siren and I ran," he'd tried to explain, still covered in dust and blood from the cave-in.

He looked down at himself, covered in dust and blood. He stood beneath two moons in the sky, his most recent assignment complete. Three Grendler bodies lay in the cave beneath him, carefully dissected and examined as Riley watched and commented over POV.

Two were clean kills; the other had taken him by surprise, coming out from beneath a pile of smelly rags just as he entered the lair. He'd been forced to shoot twice, as the first shot had only wounded it, causing it to send hooting cries into the air that sounded for all the world like a mine cave-in siren.

Outside, covered in dust and blood, he pressed the remote detonation button that sent a concussion through the cave ceiling, collapsing it to bury the remains of the Grendler family. The third one had been their young.

Morgan could tell by watching that the ZED was undergoing some kind of serious memory trauma. Though he'd never been confident enough to do it alone, he decided he needed the planet's help and eased onto the Dreamplane to call her.

"Mom," he called tentatively. "It's me, Morgan. Can I talk to you about Zeke?" The planet's presence came to him then, instructing him, asking him to lend the troubled man some of his own stability, some of the earth's stability to get him through this. "But you know me, Mom," Morgan began to back away. "I'm not very stable myself."

Morgan then picked up a rush of sadness and impatience for her human children whose pain was ever-present, ever-fresh. He was a bit confused, but then felt a wave of comfort. Her stability stretched through the ages. She could take care of them both.

Cameron and Walman watched curiously as Morgan took a step toward the emotionally distressed ZED and knelt beside him, placing his hand on Zeke's shoulder. "Let's Dream a little, big fella," he announced casually in an attempt to cover his nerves.

Morgan found himself on a Dreamplane unlike any other he'd ever visited. Images and dramatic tableaux surrounded them, memories of Zeke's past, he guessed.

"Morgan, what did they do to me?" Zeke asked angrily, standing in the center of a maelstrom of past actions and experiences.

"I don't really know," Morgan answered, placing a comforting hand on his arm. The touch seemed to help a little, as Zeke calmed visibly and the memories seemed to back away a little in intensity.

"I can see my life, my own life," Zeke began to explain, "but then I see that other life here and they get mixed up together in my mind and I don't know who did what. I don't know what I did and what they did."

Images of the ZED holding a little red haired baby swirled to the forefront. Zeke looked down at Morgan with tears in his eyes. "Did I kill my baby sister, Morgan? Was that what happened?"

"No!" Morgan was appalled. "No, Zeke! You absolutely didn't kill anybody. There's no way you can take the blame for what Riley forced you to do as a ZED." He reinforced the grip of the planet on him by grabbing both of his arms. "You have to separate yourself from those actions. That was not you. That happened to somebody else—somebody you're not."

The background of images swirled again, Morgan could see Zeke along with several other ZEDs shooting Terrians in some sort of pitched battle. The Terrian blasts didn't seem to hurt the ZEDs, but the ZED rifles dropped the Terrians where they stood, sending psychic cries of distress into the Dreamplane.

"Who is holding the rifle, Morgan?" Zeke asked viciously. "Who is pulling the trigger?"

"Mom knows you didn't do it," Morgan tried to explain. "She doesn't blame you for what the Council made you do. You can't blame yourself either."

Zeke jerked out of Morgan's grip and the images began to surge around him again, pressing their violence and horror closer. Morgan didn't know how much longer he could take it.

"Mom?" Zeke asked in a scathing voice. "The planet? The planet doesn't blame me for this?" He gestured around at the drama around them. "I am to blame, Morgan. I was there. I didn't stop it."

Suddenly the entire Dreamscape went empty and they stood again in the mines of Callisto, rescue crews dashing past, yellow lights flashing. Morgan and Zeke stood off to the side watching as his younger self stood with his mother in the aftermath of the cave-in. They watched as she slapped him hard across the face, yelling at him.

Then Zeke saw the rest of the memory unfold. He watched helplessly as his mother's anger turned to heartbreak—the grief and pity on her face even more terrible than her anger.

"Oh, baby, I'm so sorry," she whispered, reaching up to soothe the angry red handprint from his cheek. "I'm so sorry I hurt you." The tears began to roll down her face and she pulled him into her arms. "You couldn't help it, you couldn't know."

Morgan and Zeke watched from the side as the young miner wept against his mother's red hair so like his own. She clung to her son, comforting him and drawing comfort all at the same time.

"Mom wants you to remember this," Morgan said distantly. "She wants you to remember that you were not to blame then and you are not to blame now. She forgives you for your actions on her planet. You have to forgive yourself. You didn't stop it because you couldn't stop it. You are not to blame for that."

The Dreamplane swirled back around them into its usual empty whiteness. Morgan was relieved to see that the visible memories had disappeared.

Zeke stood there in the empty field, its grasses blowing brightly around them. "If I am not to blame, who is?" he asked.

"The Council," Morgan answered. "Riley, I guess. That's where your orders came from, right?"

"Then I want to talk to Riley. I want to see his face," Zeke began sternly. "I want to see his face before I kill him."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

The med lab was completely silent. Ever so often, Julia would run her diaglove over True to check her progress. They had been filtering her blood for the past hour or so, and the toxin levels seemed to be decreasing but not as quickly as she would like.

Yale entered the room then, an information chip in his hand. "Julia," he said quietly, "I think this might be of help to you."

She took the chip and placed in into the med lab terminal. "What is this, Yale?" she asked, mystified by what she was seeing on the screen before her.

"In cross referencing the toxins in True's systems, I discovered that this particle is somehow related to terraforming technology," Yale began. "But I don't know much more than that. My databanks are not specific enough in their coverage of the topic to help us much. Most terraforming technology is classified or purely theoretical. I believe we should bring Mazatyl in to see what he knows. He's built a number of outposts on a variety of planets and asteroids. He might know something more about this."

Baines made a quick call on gear to Mazatyl. "So what is this particle doing?" Julia asked. "Terraforming us?"

"I don't believe so," Yale replied. "I believe that Bennett must have used the terraforming technology he possessed to create the particle—a sort of doomsday device for any humans who attempted to land on the planet. I believe they should have replicated themselves and covered the surface by now, completely eradicating human life from G889. However, something he could not have foreseen has intervened, keeping the particles from spreading from this area."

"It could be the interaction with the planet's biosphere," Julia suggested. "This place has strange effects on human technology, especially molecular and nanotechnology."

Mazatyl entered the lab, a bit taken aback by the sight of the Terrian holding True. "How is she?" he asked nervously.

"She's hanging in there," Julia replied. "Yale has uncovered some information on terraforming technology that he thinks is related to this particle. What do you know about terraforming?"

"Well, it's all theoretical at this point," Mazatyl began. "No one has been able to engineer a sufficiently robust vehicle for carrying the kind of information that would be required to truly terraform a planet."

"What about the geolock?" Baines suggested. "That did a pretty good job of carrying information, I thought."

"Geolocks are the first step in terraforming," Mazatyl explained. "The petrification process happens on the molecular level, just like it would with terraforming. But true terraforming would require more than petrification. You'd have to engineer atmosphere and water as well as any soil changes that would have to be made. It's just too much information, too many changes."

"Take a look at this," Yale began, pointing to the information on Julia's terminal screen.

Mazatyl scanned the files and images, his eyes growing wide. "I don't believe this," he exclaimed. "They've done it. On a limited scale, of course, but they've done it."

"Done what?" Julia asked.

"This is a basic terraforming process," Mazatyl stated. "Not to the extent you'd have to use on Venus, or even Mars, but it's a start. I'd say whoever wrote this was attempting to change this planet's basic physical structure to something more like earth normal. It's like they were trying to rewrite the ground."

"And Bennett used this somehow to create these particles?" Baines asked. "That makes no sense to me at all."

"The particles are the vehicle," Mazatyl explained. "Bennett just rewrote the instructions to change our basic biology instead of the ground itself."

"Do you think he was hoping to change humans into something that the planet would accept?" Yale asked.

"Accepted by the planet, but not controlled by it," Julia mused aloud. "Riley has such a pre-occupation with controlling the planet. I think he and Bennett were threatened by the close cooperation of the first settlers with the Terrians. They were afraid the humans here would be too closely linked to the planet and the Terrians that the Council wouldn't be able to keep their hold secure."

"So they created the biostat implant and experimented with biologically altering humans," Yale surmised. "All so they could retain control. And when Bennett failed to do this, he decided to pull the plug so to speak on the whole experiment, Riley and all. But how can this help us help True?"

Julia turned her attention to the little girl so still in the Terrian's arms. "Just knowing more about what we're dealing with makes it easier to deal with," she stated, bringing her diaglove to the terminal. "I'm going to add new parameters for the filtration. That should definitely speed things along. Not to mention giving me new ideas as to how to stop this thing up front."

On the deep Dreamplane, John sat with True, telling her stories, even singing, just like when she was a baby. He wanted her to know he was there with her. He was so grateful that he could be with her.

Finally, she opened her eyes and looked at him. "Dad?" she asked with a yawn. "Where are we?"

"Truegirl, you are on the Dreamplane," he replied with a smile. "And I am glad to see you."

"Where are the Terrians?" she asked, sitting up and looking around.

"They're in another part of the Dreamplane," John answered.

"Can we go there? I want to see them," she said intently.

"So much for being afraid of Terrians, huh?" he teased as he helped her to her feet, then rose to stand with her. He wasn't precisely sure how to go about getting to the Terrians' place on the Dreamplane, but he just held her hand, closed his eyes in concentration, and imagined them there.

To his surprise it worked. He knelt next to her as she lay in the earth. Her eyes opened and two Terrians came forward to pull her free. Alonzo and Uly were there, and Bess gave her a hug. There was much trilling from the Terrians as well as Uly.

True looked at him in surprise. "I can understand them," she said in awe. John was glad to hear it, because to him it sounded like birdsong, not speech.

"Then tell them I said thank you," he asked her, his voice deep with emotion.

She tilted her head a little and closed her eyes to trill experimentally at them.

In the hallway, Morgan followed Zeke into the ops center, trying very hard to convince him that what he was about to do was a bad idea—a very bad idea.

"You can't just kill Riley," Morgan tried again to explain. "He's an orbiting supercomputer. We don't have any missiles to shoot at him even if we knew where he was."

"Mom has an idea," Zeke responded evenly. "We don't have to know where he is to do this. He's going to want to talk to me and when he does, Mom is going to let him have it."

Morgan jumped desperately into the Dreamplane. "Mom! What is Zeke talking about? What are you planning to do?"

Reassurance and excitement flowed past him even as he attempted to keep walking with Zeke in the waking world. "Don't tell me not to worry about it!" Morgan retorted. "It is too my business! If you funnel that kind of energy through Zeke at one time, it'll kill him."

Zeke grabbed his arm and pulled him to a halt. "Don't worry about it, Morgan. I don't mind if it kills me. It'll be a relief—trust me," he explained with a grin.

Morgan was disturbed and saddened to see that Zeke looked happier at the thoughts of dying than he'd seen him yet. "Mom! This isn't right and you know it!" Morgan complained to the planet.

"What the hell is going on out here?" came Danziger's deep voice out of the med lab door.

"Zeke and Mom are going to kill Riley," Morgan blurted out. "See if you can talk some sense into them." He grabbed Danziger's arm and the ZED's, boldly pulling each of them into his link with the planet.

"Mom, tell him exactly what you are planning to do," Morgan commanded.

John stood there, listening to the planet's plan of action, and reacted exactly like Morgan had. "No! You saw how we got knocked out when you linked to Zeke. If you use him to link to Riley with that kind of firepower, it will kill him and in all likelihood not even hurt Riley," John explained.

Morgan watched the tall mechanic give a tired shake of his head. "I agree that this is a very interesting idea, Mom," John continued. "I appreciate the level of commitment that you and Zeke have for taking Riley out completely—hell, I'm with you on that. But let's think this thing through. Maybe a surgical strike is the best option."

There was a pause as the planet responded to him, apparently asking for clarification. "Well, we have these other ZEDs. They're Riley's hand and feet. Take them out of the picture and he is helpless. We'll keep working on deactivating the broadcast of our biostat implants and he won't be able to find us. Without the ZEDs, he won't have any contact with the surface at all unless we contact him over the dish or at Bennett's ship."

Morgan realized that John had given away something important when the planet responded to them all with a vivid picture of using the dish itself to launch an all-out assault on Riley.

John pulled part of himself into the waking world. He returned to the med lab. Bess and Uly were talking with True, who was now fully awake and resting comfortably on a bed. Alonzo snored softly to the side; the Terrian stood next to the children, his demeanor as much proud uncle as any Terrian could manage. Julia and Baines were working intently, but he decided it was worth it to bother them.

"Doc, can I borrow you for just a minute?" he asked. At her nod, he pulled her simultaneously into the hall and onto the Dreamplane.

"Julia, tell Mom all you know about Riley—what he does here, what his mission is, what you know about him, okay?" John ordered.

"Why?" Julia stiffened with concern.

"Mom and Zeke are planning to take him down," Morgan explained with a grimace.

With some difficulty, John, Morgan, and Julia managed to talk Zeke and the planet back away from their idea of an all-out assault in favor of launching a deactivation campaign against the ZEDs. Yale was also pulled into the conversation, allowing Julia to return to her work on stopping the particles.

The new information from True and Yale had indeed served to illuminate the problem nicely, she thought. With Mazatyl and Baines' help, she concocted a trial serum that she hoped would knock out the particles without causing them to degrade structurally. Using a live batch from her own system, she innoculated the sample and waited.

"Hey," came Alonzo's voice from the bed. "What's going on?" He looked across the room to see True chatting merrily with Uly. "True!"

To his surprise, she Dreamed a response back to him. "You're a fast learner," he Dreamed back.

"I think I got jumpstarted or something," she responded.

"Yeah, probably," Uly interjected—not even Dreaming could disguise the jealousy in his voice.

Bess jumped in with a Dream of her own, "Guys, it's rude to Dream behind people's backs. Everybody back out into the real world, okay?"

"Since when are you a Terrian-style Dreamer?" Alonzo asked as Bess walked over to his bedside.

"I guess since John and I helped out with True. I like it. It's got a different flavor to it," she replied with a grin.

Julia walked over with the diaglove and an injection. She ran the glove over Alonzo, frowning a little. "How are you feeling?" she asked in concern.

"Not great," Alonzo answered. "My joints feel like I've been on a 5 year cryosleep in the wrong position." He grimaced. "And that really has happened to me. Took two weeks before I could walk straight again." At Julia's look of disbelief, he continued, "Don't ever piss off your sleep doc before a jump—wait until you're safely thawed."

Julia just shook her head. "Anyway," she began, "I don't like the look of these readings. If things were any less serious, I'd do more trials on this before giving it a shot. But I figure at the worst, it'll give you an upset stomach. At the best, it'll shut down those particles in your system without breaking them apart."

"Let's hope for the best, then," Alonzo said, baring his neck for the injection.

In the ops room, Danziger, Morgan, Yale, and Zeke had been joined by Danner and Walman. "Okay, the way I see it, the four of us," Danziger motioned to himself, Morgan, Yale, and Zeke, "will do the reprogramming, Danner will handle the uplink and be sure we don't get detected too soon, and Walman will be sure we don't overdrain the power generators."

"Are you sure we don't want anyone else in this?" Morgan asked. "This is a pretty big job."

"I don't believe we should risk anyone else," Yale responded. "All the same, we should probably let Julia know what we're doing, just in case one of us gets injured."

"Tell you what," Danziger suggested, "Walman, part of your job is to go get Julia if things go sour. She's just next door and I don't really want to stir up anything at the moment. But do let her know the power might be unstable for a little while."

Walman ducked his head into the med lab to tell her and was happy to see Alonzo also sitting up in bed laughing. "How's it going in here, doc?" he asked.

"Very well," Julia answered with a smile. "I think we've done it! The particle numbers in Alonzo's system are dropping rapidly with no sign of toxic side effect. If this keeps up as expected, I'll be able to inoculate everybody and this will all be over!"

"Great!" Walman replied, watching with a grin as Alonzo pulled his pretty doctor in for a big kiss. "I'll go tell everybody." He started to close the door, then almost as if an afterthought added, "Oh, and the power will be iffy for a little bit—that okay?"

"It shouldn't be a problem," she replied.

"Why?" Alonzo asked suspiciously. "What's going on?"

"Just a little generator maintenance," Walman answered, the door already closing on him. "Nothing to worry about."

Next door in the ops center, Danziger, Morgan, Yale, and Zeke had already donned VR gear for the big push. Danner had the link to the dish up and humming. "Guys, Julia's cured Alonzo. We're all gonna live apparently," Walman announced.

"That's great," Danziger responded distantly, already deep in the VR link. "Let's see if we can knock out these ZEDs so we can keep on living. Zeke, keep him talking while Yale and Morgan try to find a back door into his CPU."

"ZED Theta 8570 to command central," Zeke called over the channel Danner had opened.

"Riley here. I thought I'd lost you, ZED," came Riley's voice back over the room intercom.

In the VR Dreamplane, John held the sunstone tightly in his hand, extending the planet's abilities and power into Yale and Morgan as they searched. Zeke stood with them, continuing his update of Riley.

"I had a minor malfunction with my communications uplink," Zeke stated flatly. "I have completed my assignment with the interrogation of the Eden Advance members with altered biostat implant chips. As instructed, I have taken a tissue sample from the affected members including portions of brainstem and spinal column."

Morgan grew pale all of a sudden as he realized what Zeke had been ordered to do to Bess. Any reluctance he'd felt at attacking Riley went completely out the window as he redoubled his efforts to find an undetectable way into the central system.

"Excellent, ZED unit. Proceed to base with the samples and we will commence their analysis," Riley continued. "Renew contact when you are at base. Riley out."

"Wait," Zeke said, striving to keep the emotion out of his voice and racking his brain for something to keep Riley on the line. "The interrogation has filled my database. Request a download now. My comm link is still under repair and may go down again."

Riley paused, then answered, "Acknowledged, commence download of interrogation data."

Morgan and Yale looked at each other then at John. This was it. They'd let Riley download them directly into his system. Once in, Mom could rewrite the ZED program and send it to all the ZEDs out there. John nodded at Zeke and the VR Dreamscape took a turn for the digital.

John had watched before as Yale had interfaced with Riley's databanks back on Bennett's ship. This looked very much the same. He just held on for the ride, feeling more than a little motion sickness as Yale navigated the root directory, searching for links to the ZEDs.

"Got it," Yale whispered and pushed to enter, but the way was protected. The planet then took over, quickly busting the code and barreling into the files, guns ablazing so to speak.

"ZED unit," Riley called out in fear. "You are accessing classified information. You are ordered to retreat from this area."

"Screw you," Zeke called. "I'm not a ZED anymore, you bastard. I don't take orders." Zeke, John, and Morgan leaned all their resources into the planet's work through Yale. Digitally speaking, it was a bloodbath.

Searing sequences of code rewrote the ZED protocol throughout the system and 149 ZED units across the planet simultaneously crashed, their mindwashes broken utterly and their links to Riley disabled. Then the planet's new code blasted apart the link from the satellite, completely disabling Riley's ability to contact them.

"Stop! Stop! What are you doing?" Riley screamed. "ZED unit, stop right this minute! You have no idea the damage you're causing!"

"I think I know pretty well," Zeke responded. "I want to see you—go to virtual."

With a snap and flash, the digital VR world gave way to the visual as Riley stood there in the gray room he'd used to meet with Julia so long ago. For a computer simulation, Riley's terror seemed very real to Zeke. The others stayed out of sight, watching only, their identities secret—for now.

"ZED unit--" Riley began.

"My name is Charles Alan Taylor. I was a miner on Callisto until you bastards took my identity and turned me into a monster, a murderer," Zeke spat furiously. "Now your other monsters are set free. I hope to God they can find themselves again."

"How? How did you?" Riley managed to say through the cybernetic confusion that still wracked his system.

Zeke held the sunstone out in his hand. "Riley, meet Mom. Mom, meet Riley. He's the one that's been trying to kill you." The stone surged in brightness and Zeke added, "Riley, you'd better lay low for a while. Mom's really, really pissed." Then the brightness flashed with an overwhelming surge, blinding them all. The power generators roared and whined as they reached capacity, then shut down, leaving the complex in utter darkness.

However, there was light on the Dreamplane and John, Morgan, and Yale looked around for Zeke. He lay there unmoving, the stone glowing only faintly in his hand.

"Zeke! Zeke!" Morgan yelled, slapping him lightly. "Come on, Mom. He just started to live—don't let him die!"

Yale held his head in his hands. "She couldn't resist, John. She knew she had Riley at a disadvantage. The ZEDs are all wandering out there, lost. Their mindwashes are in tatters. Who knows how they'll manage to survive reintegration on their own."

John reached out to take the sunstone from Zeke's hand and listened. "They won't be alone. Mom's already sending out Terrians and penal colonists that Dream to intercept them. She's going to keep an eye on them. She hopes some of them aren't past redemption."

The sunstone's glow faded a bit more. "But she's through keeping an eye on us at the moment. The link pulled the last of the energy from the stone in the power generator. We'll be out of direct contact with her until a new one is brought to us. We should be patient until then," John translated. Then he looked up at Yale and Morgan with a strange expression. "She says she'll miss us."

"But what about Zeke?" Morgan asked, grief stricken. "Was he just expendable?"

"I don't think so," John replied as the former ZED began to stir.

A day later, Julia finished the last of her post-inoculation check ups on the crew. Everyone had responded beautifully to the serum she'd created. Everyone's particle counts had gone to zero without complication. With a little modification, she should be able to inoculate Devon as well, provided of course she survived cold sleep. She wasn't the world's most confident in the Council ship's cryochambers.

In the open field outside, Danziger and True worked hard on repairing the solar conversion panel on the dunerail. Alonzo, Zeke, Walman, and Baines crouched nearby watching and waiting.

"Give me a number six," Danziger instructed. His assistant quickly passed the tool into her father's waiting hands and turned to her own work reassembling the housing for the charge modulator.

"How's this, Dad?" she asked, holding up the finished piece.

Danziger gave it a careful once over. "Great job, Truegirl. Baines wouldn't have come close," he said with a grin in Baines' direction.

Finally, the conversion panel was fitted into place and Danziger sat in the driver's seat for the moment of truth, True next to him. "Vehicle start," he ordered firmly. Nothing.

"Hey, Uly!" Danziger called. The boy ran over to see how he could possibly be of help. "Do me a favor and go spit on that conversion panel, will ya?"

"Sure," Uly agreed in excitement and ran to the back of the vehicle, spitting vigorously at it.

"Okay, step back now," Danziger called to him, then reset the dunerail's power supply with a subtle flick of a switch. He knew True noticed and gave her a wink. "Vehicle start," he called again and the rail rumbled to life, solar power conversion panels humming eagerly.

"True, why don't you and Uly take the first ride," Danziger suggested with a grin as he extracted himself from the driver's seat. True crawled over into his spot and he adjusted the pedals for her as Uly hopped into the passenger's seat. With a puff of road dust, they were off on an adventure. But the protective parent in him yelled, "Stay inside the perimeter!"

_Morgan VO: Somehow we managed to conquer our demons. True and Alonzo are alive and well, despite Franklin Bennett's best efforts to eradicate us from this planet. Zeke has found himself again, despite the Council's best efforts to turn him into a monster. In two days, we'll go back for Devon. Who knows what dangers lie ahead of us? Who knows when we will cross paths with Riley again? For now, all that matters is that we are alive and well and whole and soon to be together again. _

**Author's Note: Sorry this took so long, folks. It was a bear to write. Let me know if it's paying off for you. **

**Next week, on Earth 2 . . . thawing Devon and an encounter of the Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom kind. **


End file.
